A railroad network includes a network of trains operated by one or more control stations. During operation, the network of trains transmits data to the control station(s), where one or more operators and/or processors analyze the data and provide instructions to each of the trains. The network often involves multiple trains each having multiple assets.
The assets associated with each train can include, among other things, locomotives, other non-locomotive rail vehicles, and/or stationary equipment located throughout the railroad network. Each asset has multiple components that are susceptible to wear and breakdown resulting from everyday use. As a result, each asset is typically provided with sensors and/or controllers for detecting abnormal operating conditions and sending signals to the control station(s) indicative of those conditions. However, although alerted to these abnormal conditions, the operators are generally provided with large amounts of data, making it difficult to collect and interpret the data in an efficient manner. Thus, the complexity of the network requires multiple levels of control working concertedly to ensure efficiency as well as accuracy.
One system that attempts to manage a fleet of remote assets is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,783,507 (the '507 patent) that issued to Schick et al., on Aug. 24, 2010. The '507 patent discloses a system for managing a plurality of mobile assets, such as a fleet of locomotives. The system includes real-time data collection from each of the mobile assets, computerized analysis of the real-time data for failure detection and prediction, and the planning of maintenance activities responsive to such failure predictions prior to the mobile asset being taken out of service. The system also includes development of historical information regarding actual usage of each remote asset, and the arranging of that actual usage of the remote asset based on a plurality of operational modes of the asset. The information is gathered and displayed on an Internet web site for future analysis by the user.
Although the system of the '507 patent may help the user to manage a fleet of locomotives, it may be limited. Specifically, while the system of the '507 patent may collect large amounts of data about the fleet of locomotives, the data is not organized in a manner that facilitates the user's analysis of potential issues with the fleet of locomotives. As a result, resolving the potential issues can be very time consuming, or even worse, the potential issues can be overlooked, causing even greater delays and expensive downtime of the locomotives.
The disclosed visual diagnostic system is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.